Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Another fall shot taken at a local you-pick orchard. They have a fall festival that is open every weekend in October. The boys went with my in-laws on Sunday while I went to sew with some friends. (I'm glad they went, this outing is somewhat of a tradition for us - the furlough & the weather & competing fall activities almost made us miss it this year.)
My most recent finish & possibly my oldest UFO finished. I had the blocks 90% done & then set the project aside for several years. At the quilt retreat that I attended earlier this year, I only brought UFO's. I finished this top there (in about 2 hours - at least it felt that quick). This is a gift for a dear friend & I am going to deliver it today. :o)
One of my oldest & most favorite quilts is on my bed! (It has a label - it was finished in 2004.)
Now I get to look for and stare at my favorite kitties.

Monday, October 28, 2013

To begin, once upon a time ago, I wanted to have a set of seasonal quilts. Spring and Winter are done.
Summer became a charity quilt. Fall's blocks and bits and pieces of blocks were sent off to become a charity quilt or two.

I love the warmth of an autumnal palette. But I am not sure that I still want to make an autumn quilt. And then I see quite a few Modern Maples quilts and start thinking autumn quilt. Meanwhile, the list of works in progress and unfinished objects never seems to get any smaller and I already own a ton of quilts.

Back to fall, since I love an autumnal palette, I am always game for a fall inspired drive or hike or both and that is exactly what we did last weekend.

Friday, October 25, 2013

I don't like to play favorites with my quilts, but this one rank's pretty high up there right now.

The pattern, "Made in Cherry" by Sarah Fielke was free on the Lecien website. There also was a quilt-a-long. I was super happy when my jumbo quarter square triangles fit perfectly. & I am also happy that this big star has 8 points!

Admission: I rarely join quilt-a-longs (or popular quilt patterns) while they are in progress, I wait until the idea percolates in my brain for a while. Example: Swoon = pile of fabric, Scrap Vomit, spider web & Granny Square = completed well after the popularity subsided.

I had this quilt professionally quilted & so am entering it into the professionally quilted category. (I hope you can see the quilting...)

Friday, October 18, 2013

Once again, for the last time Fractured Friday is upon us.
We started with something like this
added a dash of this
tried this on for size
Fiddled a bit with bits & pieces
finished the blocks
started to layout quadrants
& finally ended up with a top

I had a plan from the beginning for the back, but I did not measure how much yardage I had. Not enough...

& then I made some other tops
This isn't big enough as it is, but is may become a panel on the back of my fractured quilt... Maybe I will border this with the original fabric...

Not sure yet, but I better figure it out soon, I want to drop my tops off for quilting.

Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 325 degrees F. Cut the butter into small chunks and place in a large mixing bowl along with the sugar and brown sugar. Use an electric mixer to beat together the butter and sugar for a few minutes. Make sure the butter is fully integrated into the sugar and the mixture becomes small, even sized crumbs.Add the eggs and applesauce to the bowl and continue to mix till smooth.In a small bowl, mash the bananas with a fork till smooth. Add the mashed bananas, Greek yogurt, and vanilla to the bowl. Use a spatula to stir the mixture till smooth.In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, salt, cloves and nutmeg. Fold the dry ingredients into the wet to make a thick batter. Don't over mix-- a few lumps are okay.Fold in the chopped walnuts.Grease two loaf pans with nonstick cooking oil spray. Divide the batter evenly between the two pans. (I add about 1 cup of chocolate chips to the 2nd half at this point.)Bake the banana bread for 45-55 minutes, turning once halfway through baking, till the top is golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean. If the top of the bread browns faster than it bakes, cover with foil for the remainder of baking time.Let the loaves cool for 10 minutes in their pans, then put them on a wire rack to cool completely.

Back in about 2007, I started a project that had 360 pieces - no big deal. In 14 sizes - still not a real big deal. As ever I was going for very scrappy & in a surprise to most of you it was going to use cat fabrics.

I had about 1/2 of it pieced & then boxed it up for our move. (The thinking was that this way the pieces would stay fairly flat...)

The box was the problem. I don't generally store things in boxes (I'm a bag lady). So this box sat on a shelf for several years. (I remembered the project, but it wasn't one that called out to me, if you know what I mean.)

Maybe 3 weeks ago, I pulled the box of the shelf, on a whim really, and found this project. While it felt good to find it, it still wasn't calling out to me. Until yesterday.

As I mentioned earlier, I had pieced about half of it & had cut out some other pieces - but there we no notes, so I spent a good mount of time figuring out what I had already done & what I needed to do. (I needed to cut some & sew some more.)

Luckily my pile of "scrappy back" squares was cut to 10.5 inches, because I needed 15 of them for this top. The rest of the cuts cam out of my scrap bin - YIPPY. Although in hindsight, I had a good wonder on what exactly is a scrap, I was able to get 5.5 x 12.5 rectangles out of those scraps... (Yeah, this pattern is ideal for large scale prints & when I started the project several years ago, I cut accordingly - yay me.)

What do you call a scrap? Does your definition change with the fabric? (or your mood?)

By the end of the day, I had all 30 of my blocks pieced into rows, today I will finish piecing the top & pieced the back out of an equally old piece of flannel that I purchased to be a quilt back - so it is fitting.

Then I will piece Fractured blocks so I can come back here later for a Fractured Friday post.

(I also got some happy surprise mail yesterday - a fat quarter bundle of some Voile fabric by Anna Maria Horner - I have that pieced into a back already - I just need a bit more Voile so it will be big enough for my Liberty Lawn & Shott Cotton top. I placed that order yesterday.)

Tuesday, October 08, 2013

For the 3rd or 4th year in a row, we went to the National Apple Harvest Festival in Adams County, Pennsylvania (just north of Gettysburg).

Jacob took this photo.

The festival is a lot of crafts, but also of Apple products. We get jelly to take home & eat apple cobbler & apple crisp while there. My husband also learned the difference between apple juice & apple cider - sorry I did not hear that conversation - I was watching Jacob with his last juice box.

This year we took a free apple harvest history tour - which was actually fairly educational (In my experience this type of tour can go either way.).

It was hot!

So afterwards we decided to check out a local orchard/winery (we saw their signs on the tour).

Michael got a couple bottles of hard cider. Jacob got a non-alcoholic slushy drink, mine had a shot of wine added to it. Now those helped with the heat!

Monday, October 07, 2013

There once was an old lady who collected I SPY charms. I don't know why she collected I SPY charms, perhaps she'll make a quilt. But she had already made several I SPY quilt for her young son.
So she decided to make an ADULT I SPY & so collected & traded accordingly.
She had Zebras & Quilts
Victrolas
& wine
money
Queen Victoria & sewing notions
Paint by number
& Campbells soup (quite coincidentally next to some mighty fine non-branded beers.)
A Tiffany Lamp
A box of chocolates
Good old fashioned arithmetic
a circuit board
a farmers market
Alice
Stamps
A pocket book
a marionette
ink pens
Robots & a TV dinnner
Then she remembered how much she loved those old fashioned childish prints...
She still kept yoga
& yogurt
& potions
& a Mercury Rocket
& Jiffy Pop Popcorn (Do you remember that - oh how much fun was that to make?)
Even though she had more that enough prints, she kept adding cute things like nanny bees
She even used "precious" pieces like this beach print
Do you see the secret squirrel, she loves this kind of print.
& a button card
Coors Beer (I wonder if they even know that they are on fabric with Amstel? I believe that there is some Miller too.)
Cigars are in the adult realm,
but the inchworm is a childhood favorite - I had a riding toy inchworm.
As a child of the 80's she has cassette tapes
& a boom box
& yet the lure of a sweet cowboy, surely is too juvenile for an adult I SPY & yet there it is

Along with a pool scene
& a pile of magazines
a double decker bus
a rodeo & a may pole
The backwards "F" - go ahead look at it again - if it had an error, you better believe that this little old lady collected it!
Sushi!
An Italian scene & garlic - another fun coincidence...
I purchased that dance scene just for this quilt!
Even as I was sewing today, I was still adding in prints, one of the latest additions was this one of tickets.

Now that all of my blocks (80 9-ptaches) are pieced, I am done with collecting for this top. & yet I still have a pile of novelty charms & I plan on using 10 inch squares of novelty prints as a pieced back...

I hope this jibberish was not too horrible to read, it is just how I spent my day & apparently a large portion of my quilt life.

What else do you see?
Can you guess what might be in the charms that did not make it into this preview?
What would you have added?